NEW YORK—America cringes. OK, so America probably shrugs and resumes whatever it was doing to hold up the backbone of this great country, but for argument’s sake, let’s assume America gives a ripe fig.

Let’s also get this minor detail out of the way: The New York Giants live and practice and play in New Jersey. The New England Patriots play and practice in Foxborough, Mass., and they’d be fools to live north of Route 128 because the daily commute would drive them bonkers.

So it’s a media-generated thing, this Boston vs. New York wagathon that this week will be shoved all over TVs, newspapers, the interwebs and wherever else you might go to learn what you absolutely need to know about Super Bowl XLVI and its key story lines, like what shampoo Tom Brady uses. (According to one website, he gets his locks trimmed in SoHo, but New Englanders ignore his New York fetish as long as he wins.)

Whenever Boston plays New York in anything, up spout endless quarrels about which city rules. The two could hold a marbles tournament in Hartford and nobody would be shocked if a fight broke out over some nonsense like which region boasts the best clam chowder. (New England, of course, because chowdah is meant to be made with cream and if you argue otherwise, you should not be out conversing in public.)

For years I lived in Boston and mostly loved it. Oliver Wendell Holmes called it the Hub of the Solar System and he was right, even when the Big Dig made it impossible to travel more than a few inches. Boston reeks of mystery and history; the mind expands just from being around all those major universities and quaint colleges.

Boston's neighborhoods are charming, it has good public transit, it’s a walkable city, jogs around the Charles don’t feel like exercise and everyone you meet is wicked smart. Step outside and often there's a sense that something magical might happen.

Boston is a tad slower than New York, though to the rest of America that’s akin to saying Paris Hilton is slightly more bearable than Kim Kardashian. Not everyone can put up with the bustle and the horn honking and the feeling that you might have plodded into something extremely gross while leaving the opera. Not everyone can handle being on the road with the worst drivers in the world. Those treats and more define both Boston and New York, and sometimes it feels like a toss up when it comes to which city can stack the most rudeness into one square foot.

For years I have lived in New York and still mostly love it. To step outside is to step into a day like never before. Always you will witness something different or strange or just straight out Twilight Zone weird. Every night a few homeless folks park their carts on the street and curl up on the steps of the church next to my apartment, and every morning the carts with all their belongings are still there, untouched, and there are empty boxes of food brought by the angels among us, and fresh coffee delivered by people in suits who are rushing toward the subway.

New York is glamorous, it’s incomparable in the culture and arts departments, and its bars stay open later than 1 a.m. Want to be dazzled by a new language? Step outside. Want to see monkeys riding bicycles? Step outside. For those who’d rather not risk sullying their shoes, everything one can possibly crave can be delivered, including pizza and bagels that nobody outside a four-hour radius from NYC can ever suitably make.

New Yorkers and Bostonians share a certain charming DNA. They tell it like it is, bluntly and minus the sugar coating, especially when it pertains to sports. Seriously, just ask them. Then pull up a chair, crack open a Brooklyn Lager or Sam Adams, and prop the eyelids up with a toothpick.

Bostonians will jabber on about Bill Belichick, the coach who has the finest collection of hoodies in the Eastern corridor metropolises, but who hasn’t won a Super Bowl since 2005. Gently wonder if his genius has faded and they’ll defiantly flip the conversation, asking why New Yorkers invade the Cape every summer and beg to attend Boston’s schools.

New Yorkers will prattle on about Tom Coughlin, who coached with Belichick from 1988 to 1990 and then in 2008 out-smarted his buddy in a Super Bowl that in New England is preceded with the same word that once was Bucky Dent’s middle name. These New Yorkers now gush about Coughlin in tones reserved for the sainted Derek Jeter, but ask them if they were among the hordes who wanted Coughlin fired not so long ago—in 2006 and again just a couple months ago—and suddenly they lose the ability to speak proper English.

They’ll also mutter the tired cliché about Boston being the capital of Massachusetts and New York being capital of the world. This is when you know it’s time to change the toothpick.

For an argument that will shatter light bulbs in either city, bring up Brady vs. Eli Manning. Brady has his supermodel wife, Manning has his older brother, and if both Gisele and Peyton appear in Indianapolis next week in the same place, there won’t be enough space on the interwebs to host all the ensuing pictures and words.

Brady has three Super Bowl rings, Manning only one, but it’s the one that stings. Super Bowl XLII is why so many Patriots fans would rather have needles stuck between their toenails than risk another repeat. The Giants sullied the Patriots’ undefeated 2007 season, and they did so with a mystical helmet and a quarterback who supposedly couldn’t hold Brady’s water when it came to dramatic drives.

Brady says he still can’t bear to see replays of that game. Neither can Patriots owner Robert Kraft. They might not want to watch the latest version of Pats-Giants, that startling flashback from early November when Manning outdueled Brady at the bitter end, in his own house.

To suggest nothing equals the Boston-New York rivalry is preposterous. (The goosebumps I got from reporting about an India vs. Pakistan cricket test match in the 1990s are far superior to the goosebumps that sprouted from any of the endless Yankee-Red Sox games I’ve covered.) But the rivalry does lend itself to a certain romance, if you can ignore the nasty arrogance it often inspires.

What possible surprises might squeeze next to the Curse of the Bambino, Bucky bleepin’ Dent, Bill Buckner and David Tyree’s helmet? Will Boston continue its outstanding reign as America’s sporting king? In the last decade alone the Celtics won an NBA trophy, the Bruins captured the Stanley Cup and the Red Sox destroyed everything New Yorkers thought they knew to be true and good when the Sox beat Yankees and then won the 2004 World Series, and did it all again in 2007. The Hub, with far fewer teams, lately has owned little N.Y. and even New Jersey.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, born in Boston, educated at Harvard and still blessed with a wicked Brahmin accent, puffed up his chest like a true New Yorker and recently predicted the Giants, three-point underdogs, would prevail again over the Patriots. He plans to be in Indianapolis for the Feb. 5 game, and worries he might not be able to get tickets.

Imagine that, America. A politician with his hands out. See, we have much in common.

Cover your ears if you must for the next week, and try not to despise New York or Boston too much. The shouting should be back to a dull roar by the spring, just in time for the first Grapefruit League game between the Yankees and the Red Sox.